The former owner of a Federal Way restaurant who’s accused of murdering a Japanese businessman, tabulating fraudulent checks on his account and fleeing to Japan following the crimes could face extradition and stand trial in the U.S.

On Thursday, June 30, Kyung Hee Dowdle — who’s been charged with the first-degree murder of Toshio Ota as well as with four counts of forgery — failed to appear in King County Superior Court for her arraignment, according to King County Prosecuting Attorney Office spokesman Dan Donohoe. Dowdle’s bail has been set at $5 million.

Dowdle previously owned Izakaya in Federal Way, a restaurant in which Ota invested. Dowdle reportedly fled the U.S. for Osaka, Japan, in April 10, 2011, following Ota’s murder, which charging documents from last month say took place between March 12 and March 16, 2011.

After Dowdle’s absence from her arraignment, Donohoe said in an e-mail that prosecutors will seek extradition. Since it’s international, the extradition will be handled by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs.

Donohoe said there has been contact with the Office of International Affairs, but Dowdle has yet to be located or arrested.

Charging documents detail probable cause for charges related to events happening in 2011 between March 12 and March 16, but the events culminating in Ota’s death began that January. According to the documents, Dowdle was frustrated about being removed from Ota’s personal will, so she and her roommate approached a friend to gauge his interest in killing, or helping to kill, Ota.

Then, on March 14, 2011, court records say Dowdle and another person cashed a $10,000 check on Ota’s account at Homestreet Bank in exchange for a money order in that amount paid to the order of Kyung H. Dowdle. The following day, Dowdle had a former employee — who had not been paid in two-and-a-half years of work for Dowdle — withdraw $4,000 for Dowdle and $2,000 for herself under Ota’s account with Washington Federal Savings. The next day, Dowdle’s former employee had a friend cash another check, this one for $4,000, but it was denied by Washington Federal Savings officials who claimed the signature on the check did not match Ota’s.

Interviews with that former employee revealed Dowdle had disclosed to her all the ways Dowdle could potentially kill Ota — reportedly including by using ant poison, Drano-type chemicals or crushing sleeping pills into Ota’s food at Izakaya.

At the end of March 2011, detectives with the Seattle Police Department responded to a missing persons report on the 75-year-old Ota. After gaining access to Ota’s condo, detectives found no obvious signs of foul play — however, they noted Ota’s last internet activity occurred March 12 and found evidence Dowdle owed Ota nearly $40,000. On March 30, Ota’s brother received a check marked “insufficient funds,” written under the checking account of Dowdle’s restaurant Izakaya.

By April 8, two days before Dowdle allegedly left the country, the case was reclassified as a murder investigation and turned over to the homicide department. On April 13, a friend of Dowdle reported that Dowdle had left for Japan on April 10.

Despite making some progress through interviews and discovering incriminating bank statements, detectives didn’t catch a substantial break in the case until November 9, 2012, when Ota’s body was found floating in the Columbia River near Vantage, Washington. Examinations in June 2013 showed Ota died of blunt force trauma to the head.

In October 2013, Seattle detectives interviewed a man and a woman who said they helped Dowdle “move a heavy suitcase to Eastern Washington during the month of March, 2011.” The couple told investigators the suitcase was pushed down an embankment that led to a “swift” current that ran roughly to where Ota’s remains were found.

If Dowdle is indeed in Japan, bringing her back to stand trial will require prosecutors to invoke the extradition treaty between Japan and the U.S., which was activated in 1980 “to make more effective the cooperation of the two countries for the repression of crime.”